Breaking News: Oscar-Nominated Animator Bill Plympton and Filmmaker Kevin Sean Michaels Select 10-year-old Artist Prodigy Perry Chen To Create Animated Film about a Child Survivor of The Holocaust

Apr 05, 2010 SAN DIEGO- 10-year-old award-winning artist and film critic Perry Chen has a very unique task. He will be using his talents to help other children learn the importance of the Holocaust.

Beyond The Forest is an animated short based on the experience of Holocaust survivor, Ingrid Pitt, who later became a major film and television star. Pitt and her family were imprisoned by the Nazis in the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland in 1942. She spent ages five through eight in the camp, and miraculously escaped with her mother in 1945.

The short film depicts Pitts struggle and ultimate survival. The character design is by two-time Academy Award nominee Bill Plympton.

A celebrated animator for more than 25 years, Plympton was nominated for an Academy Award in 1988 for Your Face and again in 2005 for
Guard Dog. He won 21 awards, including two awards at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991 and 2001, and the prestigious Winsor McCay Award at the 2007 Annie Awards for animation.

10 year-old Perry Chen saw Plymptons animated short, The Fan and The Flower as a film critic at the San Diego International Childrens
Film Festival in July, 2009 and became an instant admirer of Plymptons work. Later that month at Comic-Con International in San Diego, Perry came face-to-face with Bill Plympton and producer / director Kevin Sean Michaels (Vampira: The Movie, The Wild World of Ted V. Mikels). Flawlessly, Chen sketched Bills Guard Hot Dog character right along side Plymptons original drawing. Impressed, Plympton and Michaels thought Chen would be a good candidate as an artist for Beyond The Forest.

Chen will be creating thousands of pencil drawings that will make up the 5-minutes of animation for Beyond The Forest. This is the very first time that the multiple award-winning animator Bill Plympton partners with a young child artist for his animation film.